Tuesday, 1 September 2009

After meandering this way and that throughout its run thus far, Basquash! finally seems to be turning its eyes towards the final straight of the series, even though we're yet to see Dan reach the moon. This remains the case in this twenty-first episode, which remains resolutely Earthdash-bound.

Indeed, never mind reaching the moon, as it appears that everybody's mind is elsewhere, with the constant reminders of Eclipse's fairwell concert and concerns about Rouge's health weighing heavil all round. Even the usually unflappable Dan is in a stew over this state of affairs, as this episode excludes the rest of Team Basquash's party almost entirely to concentrate simply on a journey unertaken jointly by Dan and Alan/Flora.

Thus, while this episode lays out the general aim of this final Eclipse concert and Rouge's "upgrade" to lure Dan into what appears to be some kind of trap, much of our time is spent watching Flora becoming closer to Dan, whilst also finding her hidden gender increasingly problematic as a result. To be honest, I'm not really too sure what Flora's sudden infatuation with Dan has to do with the wider plot, and it ends up actually distracting us rather from what appear to be the more important issues at hand up until the close of the episode where Flora finally finds an opportunity to reveal her true identity.

To be honest, it's really difficult to know what to say about Basquash! these days, as it seems to have changed so completely from the show that I started watching a few months ago - Gone is the care-free, in your face action, replaced instead by love stories and worries about saving the world. I can't help but feel that the series as a whole is worse off for this change; although the current plot is solid enough, it doesn't really have any unique selling points to justify its existence - There's still room for a spectacular finale of course, but as of right now this show's search for a legend appears to have jeopardized its own capacity to achieve legendary status.